It’s been 50 years since Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre lit up cinema screens with its propulsive mix of desolation, buzzing tension and extreme violence. Saw-wielding maniac Leatherface is still up there with Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger as one of the most iconic depictions of murderous evil that cinema has ever produced – so it’s strange we’ve had to wait this long for a game to truly get to grips with this seminal work of rural horror.
Like 2017’s Friday the 13th, which recently had its servers shut down for good, and the still hugely successful Dead By Daylight, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (TCM) is an asymmetric online multiplayer game, in which players take part as either victims or killers. In those titles only one player gets to be the bad guy, but in TCM, three participants play together as the film’s evil Sawyer family, working together to hunt down and slay their four desperate captives, who are all trying to escape. Among the victims, Connie can instantly pick locks and Leland can stun enemies, while on the family side the hitchhiker can set traps and new character Sissy can poison things. Players gain XP for upgrades after each round, whether their side wins or not.
